The Random Thoughts of a Bored Geek » Funny: How to Break Windows Notepad

It's not a bug! It's unintended irony!

Published on May 18, 2006 By Zoomba In Windows Software

Here's a really funny way to break Notepad that a coworker showed me this morning. I bet this is one of those jokes that's been around for ages, but this was the first I ever heard of it, so it's new to me.

This actually works. It will not crash your computer, it just breaks Notepad in that it causes it to display very oddly. No perm damage comes of the following steps.

Here's how to do it:
1. Open up Notepad (not Wordpad, not Word or any other word processor)
2. Type in this sentence exactly (without quotes): "this app can break"
3. Save the file to your hard drive.
4. Close Notepad
5. Open the saved file by double clicking it.

Instead of seeing your sentence, you should see a series of squares. For whatever reason, Notepad can't figure out what to do with that series of characters and breaks

Again, it doesn't crash the app or anything, it's just a funny little twise of fate/unintended feature

Comments (Page 1)

Dr Guy

on May 18, 2006

Must be another easter egg. But it works. You guys have too much time on your hands.

Zoomba

on May 18, 2006

We're IT security, we're supposed to break things in interesting ways!

Dr Guy

on May 18, 2006

We're IT security, we're supposed to break things in interesting ways!

I thought that was the IT network engineers.

Keikonium

on May 18, 2006

lol, thats odd indeed. On my computer, it showed up as symbols (chinese or Japanese, not sure which one).

So I took it to babble fish and got the following:

Simp Chinese: 桴 □the worried thoughts ash 挠 □□knocks □
Trad Chinese: 桴獩 □the ash □湡戠 knocks happy
Japanese: 桴? ? Ash? ? ? 敲歡

Quite interesting

Tominated

on May 18, 2006

same
i think it's chinese

Tominated

on May 18, 2006

googles translator said this
"After 獩 indignant grey harassment 湡 personal sounded Fun"
i translated it from simplified chinese

Jaramia

on May 18, 2006

You should submit this to eeggs.com <---A sweet site full of easter eggs

Tommy999999

on May 18, 2006

this is really cool xD! i tried it and it actully works, it is chinese but its only a bunch of random characters

Chris TH

on May 18, 2006

You don't even have to create the file with notepad!

It breaks on those characters when created by another editor or via the console!

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

on May 18, 2006

Weird. It worked for me too.

Andrew Harwood

on May 20, 2006

it works but for some reason when you open it and delete all the weird squares and type the same over, save, and open it dosn't do it. Weird.

Zoomba

on May 21, 2006

Yeah, I found the same thing... and after you do that, the next few times you try to create a new file with the same string, it won't work either.

little-whip

on May 21, 2006

桴獩愠灰挠湡戠敲歡

no chinese here, just the wee squares.

Keikonium

on May 21, 2006

You don't have the asian fonts installed little-whip

. It is Chinese

Dr Guy

on May 21, 2006

It is Chinese

I see that on this computer. And you are right, on the work one, I did not have them installed, so they got squares. Mystery solved! Microsoft is selling out to the Chinese!

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